About this post by @buggyhuman about a tax on sugar.
My comment was deleted but I think it was basically ‘there are limits on how much refined sugar a person should consume in a day, the tax would affect the regular consumption of foods that could put a person over that limit. All carbs break down into sugar that you can use for energy (proteins and fats also get broken down) but there’s a difference between eating a potato and a pack of sweets in terms of blood sugar spiking, long-term energy and satiety. It can be useful for someone who has blood sugar lows or does sports for example but you don’t need refined sugar.’
This is what it got reduced to:
Which like I agree but that’s not all I said.
What is? Do you think that it doesn’t work or do you just like sugar? If it’s the former, that’s fair results really depends on the method of taxation.
This is a pretty good resource on all the countries that have a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), explanations on the types of taxation and case studies of countries that have seen success:
Over 50 countries have implemented taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages.
Some information on case studies of success:
Mexico: By 2016, there was a 37% reduction in the total volume of SSBs purchased, compared to the year before the tax was introduced.
The UK: The tax led to widespread reformulation to reduce sugar levels in SSBs. This was the equivalent of removing a total of 45 million kg of sugar from soft drinks each year.
Chile: After one year, there was a 22% reduction in the volume of higher-taxed drinks sold, but no change in the overall purchase of soft drinks; this indicates that some consumers switched to drinks with lower sugar content
In Malaysia, my own country, it has not been too successful but one suggestion would be to implement a higher or lower tax rate according to the sugar content, using the cap-and-trade model to implement added sugar permits so manufacturers reduce the use of sugar and to improve education regarding sugar intake. [link]
No? Not exactly at least. Any taxation makes them money. Personally, I’m not pro-free market and if this was your core issue with a sugar tax that’s fair, I’m not going to tell you to trust your government when I don’t trust any of them. I do think something like warnings on cigarette packs could be useful here, making it mandatory to clearly show how much sugar is in a serving (as in on the front of packaging) and maybe percentages of how much that is out of your daily limit could work too.
It’s difficult to estimate how this will lighten the load on public healthcare since overconsumption of high sugar ultraprocessed foods are only one aspect of ill health, but if combined with improved education this could be a save a government costs.
I would also support subsidies to expand ceiling prices to include more whole foods (Malaysia primarily covers certain imports like lamb and some vegetables, with some states covering chicken and pork too, we used to cover eggs). And I think our financial aid system that covers groceries should be expanded to cover more non-carbohydrate whole foods.
Considering that you’ve noted iron supplements it’s safe to say it’s difficult to go over your limits on iron or vitamin C. Like I wouldn’t support a tax on glucose powder which is a sugar supplement. In terms of caffeine, you could tax drinks that per serving put you close to your daily limit, I personally wouldn’t be against it considering how caffeine abuse can stem from a toxic work culture but the original post was discussing the credits of a sugar tax, why would bring this up?
The key thing here is how easily these foods can have you exceeding your daily limits on added sugar. Men should limit it to 36g and women to 25g. A 300ml can of full-sugar coke then contains 32.1g. A 47.9g pack of M&M’s contains 31g. It’s really not hard to exceed these limits.
A little self-reflection may be needed on your part in terms of the first and third point but did I mention fat people at all in my original comment? I don’t support thin people unnecessarily having so much added sugar either. Of course, I recognise the reality that obesity is unhealthy and that overconsumption of ultraprocessed foods worsens obesity.
Prolonged consumption of a high sugar diet, regardless of your weight, increases your risks of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. But also depending on where you are low/no sugar goods can be difficult to come by or are expensive. It also increases chronic inflammation that worsens a person’s risk for numerous conditions such as cardiovascular disease and autoimmune diseases (post). Considering that the targets of these taxes are ultraprocessed foods which can disrupt a person’s gut microbiome and worsen a person’s mental health.
That’s… also a problem? I’m from an Islamic country so alcohol imports and sales are heavily taxed, I sometimes forget that drinking isn’t so expensive in other countries. I personally have mixed feelings on this because as much as food/sugar addiction is a good framework to understand how our brains respond to hyper-palatable foods it’s not actually an addiction in the way that alcohol abuse is. I do think that the taxes come from moralising the consumption of alcohol which isn’t useful in recovery but also it is much easier to limit added sugar than alcohol (or any drug really) a severe drinker may not be dissuaded due to high costs. Great timing to bring this up because I made a post on alcohol consumption, it is healthy to limit your drinking too!
At the end of the day though, all we have are our own choices, regardless of whether a sugar tax is implemented or works we should all still be careful with our intake of added sugar.
